Jason: A Romance

by Justus Miles Forman

  X

  CAPTAIN STEWART ENTERTAINS

  Ste. Marie returned, after three days, from Dinard in a depressed andsomewhat puzzled frame of mind. He had found no trace whatever of ArthurBenham, either at Dinard or at Deauville, and, what was more, he wasunable to discover that any one even remotely resembling that youth hadbeen seen at either place. The matter of identification, it seemed tohim, should be a rather simple one. In the first place, the boy'sappearance was not at all French, nor, for that matter, English; it wasvery American. Also, he spoke French--so Ste. Marie had been told--verybadly, having for the language that scornful contempt peculiar toAnglo-Saxons of a certain type. His speech, it seemed, was, like hisappearance, ultra-American--full of strange idioms and oddly pronounced.In short, such a youth would be rather sure to be remembered by anyhotel management and staff with which he might have come in contact.

  At first Ste. Marie pursued his investigations quietly and, as it were,casually; but after his initial failure he went to the managements ofthe various hotels and lodging-houses, and to the cafes and bathingestablishments, and told them, with all frankness, a part of thetruth--that he was searching for a young man whose disappearance hadcaused great distress to his family. He was not long in discovering thatno such young man could have been either in Dinard or Deauville.

  The thing which puzzled him was that, apart from finding no trace of themissing boy, he also found no trace of Captain Stewart's agent--the manwho had been first on the ground. No one seemed able to recollect thatsuch a person had been making inquiries, and Ste. Marie began to suspectthat his friend was being imposed upon. He determined to warn Stewartthat his agents were earning their fees too easily.

  So he returned to Paris more than a little dejected, and sore over thiswaste of time and effort. He arrived by a noon train, and drove acrossthe city in a fiacre to the rue d'Assas. But as he was in the midst ofunpacking his portmanteau--for he kept no servant; a woman came in oncea day to "do" the rooms--the door-bell rang. It was Baron de Vries, andSte. Marie admitted him with an exclamation of surprise and pleasure.

  "You passed me in the street just now," explained the Belgian, "and as Iwas a few minutes early for a lunch engagement I followed you up." Hepointed with his stick at the open bag. "Ah, you have been on a journey!Detective work?"

  Ste. Marie pushed his guest into a chair, gave him cigarettes, and toldhim about the fruitless expedition to Dinard. He spoke, also, of hisbelief that Captain Stewart's agent had never really found a clew atall; and at that Baron de Vries nodded his gray head and said, "Ah!" ina tone of some significance. Afterward he smoked a little while insilence, but presently he said, as if with some hesitation: "May I bepermitted to offer a word of advice?"

  "But surely!" cried Ste. Marie, kicking away the half-empty portmanteau."Why not?"

  "Do whatever you are going to do in this matter according to your ownjudgment," said the elder man, "or according to Mr. Hartley's and yourcombined judgments. Make your investigations without reference to ourfriend Captain Stewart." He halted there as if that were all he hadmeant to say, but when he saw Ste. Marie's raised eyebrows he frownedand went on, slowly, as if picking his words with some care. "I shouldbe sorry," he said, "to have Captain Stewart at the head of anyinvestigation of this nature in which I was deeply interested--just now,at any rate. I am afraid--it is difficult to say; I do not wish to saytoo much--I am afraid he is not quite the man for the position."

  Ste. Marie nodded his head with great emphasis. "Ah," he cried, "that'sjust what I have felt, you know, all along! And it's what Hartley felt,too, I'm sure. No, Stewart is not the sort for a detective. He's toococksure. He won't admit that he might possibly be wrong now and then.He's too--"

  "He is too much occupied with other matters," said Baron de Vries.

  Ste. Marie sat down on the edge of a chair. "Other matters?" hedemanded. "That sounds mysterious. What other matters?"

  "Oh, there is nothing very mysterious about it," said the elder man. Hefrowned down at his cigarette, and brushed some fallen ash neatly fromhis knees. "Captain Stewart," said he, "is badly worried, and has beenfor the past year or so--badly worried over money matters and otherthings. He has lost enormous sums at play, as I happen to know, and hehas lost still more enormous sums at Auteuil and at Longchamps. Also,the ladies are not without their demands."

  Ste. Marie gave a shout of laughter. "Comment donc!" he cried. "Cevieillard?"

  "Ah, well," deprecated the other man. "Vieillard is putting it ratherhigh. He can't be more than fifty, I should think. To be sure, he looksolder; but then, in his day, he lived a great deal in a short time. Doyou happen to remember Olga Nilssen?"

  "I do," said Ste. Marie. "I remember her very well, indeed. I was a sortof go-between in settling up that affair with Morrison. Morrison'speople asked me to do what I could. Yes, I remember her well, and withsome pleasure. I felt sorry for her, you know. People didn't quite knowthe truth of that affair. Morrison behaved very badly to her."

  "Yes," said Baron de Vries, "and Captain Stewart has behaved very badlyto her also. She is furious with rage or jealousy--or both. She goesabout, I am told, threatening to kill him, and it would be rather likeher to do it one day. Well, I have dragged in all this scandal by way ofshowing you that Stewart has his hands full of his own affairs just now,and so cannot give the attention he ought to give to hunting out hisnephew. As you suggest, his agents may be deceiving him. I don't know. Isuppose they could do it easily enough. If I were you I should set towork quite independently of him."

  "Yes," said Ste. Marie, in an absent tone. "Oh yes, I shall do that, youmay be sure." He gave a sudden smile. "He's a queer type, this CaptainStewart. He begins to interest me very much. I had never suspected thisside of him, though I remember now that I once saw him coming out of amilliner's shop. He looks rather an ascetic--rather donnish, don't youthink? I remember that he talked to me one day quite pathetically aboutfeeling his age and about liking young people round him. He's an oddcharacter. Fancy him mixed up in an affair with Olga Nilssen! Or,rather, fancy her involved in an affair with him! What can she have seenin him? She's not mercenary, you know--at least, she used not to be."

  "Ah! there," said Baron de Vries, "you enter upon a terra incognita. Noone can say what a woman sees in this man or in that. It's beyond ourken."

  He rose to take his leave, and Ste. Marie went with him to the door.

  "I've been asked to a sort of party at Stewart's rooms this week," Ste.Marie said. "I don't know whether I shall go or not. Probably not. Isuppose I shouldn't find Olga Nilssen there?"

  "Well, no," said the Belgian, laughing. "No, I hardly think so.Good-bye! Think over what I've told you. Good-bye!"

  He went away down the stair, and Ste. Marie returned to his unpacking.

  Nothing more of consequence occurred in the next few days. Hartley hadunearthed a somewhat shabby adventurer who swore to having seen theIrishman O'Hara in Paris within a month, but it was by no means certainthat this being did not merely affirm what he believed to be desired ofhim, and in any case the information was of no especial value, since itwas O'Hara's present whereabouts that was the point at issue. So it cameto Thursday evening. Ste. Marie received a note from Captain Stewartduring the day, reminding him that he was to come to the rue du FaubourgSt. Honore that evening, and asking him to come early, at ten orthereabouts, so that the two could have a comfortable chat before anyone else turned up. Ste. Marie had about decided not to go at all, butthe courtesy of this special invitation from Miss Benham's uncle made itrather impossible for him to stay away. He tried to persuade Hartley tofollow him on later in the evening, but that gentleman flatly refusedand went away to dine with some English friends at Armenonville.

  So Ste. Marie, in a vile temper, dined quite alone at Lavenue's, besidethe Gare Montparnasse, and toward ten o'clock drove across the river tothe rue du Faubourg. Captain Stewart's flat was up five stories, at thetop of the building in which it was located, and so, well above thenoises of the str
eet. Ste. Marie went up in the automatic lift, and atthe door above his host met him in person, saying that the one servanthe kept was busy making preparations in the kitchen beyond. They entereda large room, long but comparatively shallow, in shape not unlike thesitting-room in the rue d'Assas, but very much bigger, and Ste. Marieuttered an exclamation of surprise and pleasure, for he had never beforeseen an interior anything like this. The room was decorated andfurnished entirely in Chinese and Japanese articles of great age andremarkable beauty. Ste. Marie knew little of the hieratic art of thesetwo countries, but he fancied that the place must be an endless delightto the expert.

  The general tone of the room was gold, dulled and softened by great ageuntil it had ceased to glitter, and relieved by the dusty Chinese blueand by old red faded to rose and by warm ivory tints. The great expanseof the walls was covered by a brownish-yellow cloth, coarse like burlap,and against it, round the room, hung sixteen large panels representingthe sixteen Rakan. They were early copies--fifteenth century, CaptainStewart said--of those famous originals by the Chinese Sung masterRiriomin, which have been for six hundred years or more the treasures ofJapan. They were mounted upon Japanese brocade of blue and dull gold,framed in keyaki wood, and out of their brown, time-stained shadows thegreat Rakan scowled or grinned or placidly gazed, grotesquely gracefulmasterpieces of a perished art.

  At the far end of the room, under a gilded canopy of intricatewood-carving, stood upon his pedestal of many-petalled lotus a greatstatue of Amida Buddha in the yogi attitude of contemplation, and atintervals against the other walls other smaller images stood or sat:Buddha, in many incarnations; Kwannon, goddess of mercy; Jizo BosatzuHotei, pot-bellied, god of contentment; Jingo-Kano, god of war. In thecentre of the place was a Buddhist temple table, and priests' chairs,lacquered and inlaid, stood about the room. The floor was covered withChinese rugs, dull yellow with blue flowers, and over a doorway whichled into another room was fixed a huge rama of Chinese pierced carving,gilded, in which there were trees and rocks and little grouped figuresof the hundred immortals.

  It, was, indeed an extraordinary room. Ste. Marie looked about itsmellow glow with a half-comprehending wonder, and he looked at the manbeside him curiously, for here was another side to this many-sidedcharacter. Captain Stewart smiled.

  "You like my museum?" he asked. "Few people care much for it except, ofcourse, those who go in for the Oriental arts. Most of my friends thinkit bizarre--too grotesque and unusual. I have tried to satisfy them byincluding those comfortable low divan-couches (they refuse altogether tosit in the priests' chairs), but still they are unhappy."

  He called his servant, who came to take Ste. Marie's hat and coat andreturned with smoking things.

  "It seems entirely wonderful to me," said the younger man. "I'm not anexpert at all--I don't know who the gentlemen in those sixteen panelsare, for example--but it is very beautiful. I have never seen anythinglike it at all." He gave a little laugh. "Will it sound very impertinentin me, I wonder, if I express surprise--not surprise at finding thismagnificent room, but at discovering that this sort of thing is a tasteand, very evidently, a serious study of yours? You--I remember yoursaying once with some feeling that it was youth and beauty and--well,freshness that you liked best to be surrounded by. This," said Ste.Marie, waving an inclusive hand, "was young so many centuries ago! Itfairly breathes antiquity and death."

  "Yes," said Captain Stewart, thoughtfully. "Yes, that is quite true."

  The two had seated themselves upon one of the broad, low benches whichhad been built into the place to satisfy the Philistine.

  "I find it hard to explain," he said, "because both things are passionsof mine. Youth--I could not exist without it. Since I have it no longerin my own body, I wish to see it about me. It gives me life. It keeps myheart beating. I must have it near. And then this--antiquity and death,beautiful things made by hands dead centuries ago in an alien country! Ilove this, too. I didn't speak too strongly; it is a sort of passionwith me--something quite beyond the collector's mania--quite beyondthat. Sometimes, do you know, I stay at home in the evening, and I sithere quite alone, with the lights half on, and for hours together Ismoke and watch these things--the quiet, sure, patient smile of thatBuddha, for example. Think how long he has been smiling like that, andwaiting! Waiting for what? There is something mysterious beyond allwords in that smile of his, that fixed, crudely carved wooden smile--no,I'll be hanged if it's crude! It is beyond our modern art. The dead mencarved better than we do. We couldn't manage that with such simplemeans. We can only reproduce what is before us. We can't carvequestions--mysteries--everlasting riddles."

  Through the pale-blue, wreathing smoke of his cigarette Captain Stewartgazed down the room to where eternal Buddha stood and smiled eternally.And from there the man's eyes moved with slow enjoyment along theopposite wall over those who sat or stood there, over the panels of theancient Rakan, over carved lotus, and gilt contorted dragon forever inpursuit of the holy pearl. He drew a short breath which seemed tobespeak extreme contentment, the keenest height of pleasure, and hestirred a little where he sat and settled himself among the cushions.Ste. Marie watched him, and the expression of the man's face began to beoddly revolting. It was the face of a voluptuary in the presence of hisdesire. He was uncomfortable, and wished to say something to break thesilence, but, as often occurs at such a time, he could think of nothingto say. So there was a brief silence between them. But presently CaptainStewart roused himself with an obvious effort.

  "Here, this won't do!" said he, in a tone of whimsical apology. "Thiswon't do, you know. I'm floating off on my hobby (and there's a mixedmetaphor that would do credit to your own Milesian blood!). I'm boringyou to extinction, and I don't want to do that, for I'm anxious that youshould come here again--and often. I should like to have you form thehabit. What was it I had in mind to ask you about? Ah, yes! The journeyto Dinard and Deauville. I am afraid it turned out to be fruitless oryou would have let me know."

  "Entirely fruitless," said Ste. Marie.

  He went on to tell the elder man of his investigation, and of hiscertainty that no one resembling Arthur Benham had been at either of thetwo places.

  "It's no affair of mine, to be sure," he said, "but I rather suspectthat your agent was deceiving you--pretending to have accomplishedsomething by way of making you think he was busy."

  Ste. Marie was so sure the other would immediately disclaim this that hewaited for the word, and gave a little smothered laugh when CaptainStewart said, promptly:

  "Oh no! No! That is impossible. I have every confidence in that man. Heis one of my best. No, you are mistaken there. I am more disappointedthan you could possibly be over the failure of your efforts, but I amquite sure my man thought he had something worth working upon.By-the-way, I have received another rather curious communication--fromOstend this time. I will show you the letter, and you may try your luckthere if you would care to." He felt in his pockets and then rose. "I'veleft the thing in another coat," said he; "if you will allow me, I'llfetch it." But before he had turned away the door-bell rang and hepaused. "Ah, well," he said, "another time. Here are some of my guests.They have come earlier than I had expected."

  The new arrivals were three very perfectly dressed ladies, one of theman operatic light, who chanced not to be singing that evening and whomSte. Marie had met before. The two others were rather difficult ofclassification, but probably, he thought, ornaments of that mysteriousborder-land between the two worlds which seems to give shelter to somany people against whose characters nothing definite is known, butwhose antecedents and connections are not made topics of conversation.The three ladies seemed to be on very friendly terms with CaptainStewart, and greeted him with much noisy delight. One of theunclassified two, when her host, with a glance toward Ste. Marie,addressed her formally, seemed inordinately amused, and laughed for along time.

  Within the next hour ten or a dozen other guests had arrived, and theyall seemed to know one another very well, and proceeded to makethem
selves quite at home. Ste. Marie regarded them with a reflective andnot over-enthusiastic eye, and he wondered a good deal why he had beenasked here to meet them. He was as far from a prig or a snob as any mancould very well be, and he often went to very Bohemian parties whichwere given by his painter or musician friends, but these people seemedto him quite different. The men, with the exception of two eminentopera-singers, who quite obviously had been asked because of theirvoices, were the sort of men who abound at such places as Ostend andMonte Carlo, and Baden-Baden in the race week. That is not to say thatthey were ordinary racing touts or the cheaper kind of adventurers(there was a count among them, and a marquis who had recently beendivorced by his American wife), but adventurers of a sort theyundoubtedly were. There was not one of them, so far as Ste. Marie wasaware, who was received anywhere in good society, and he resented verymuch being compelled to meet them.

  Naturally enough, he felt much less concern on the score of the ladies.It is an undoubted and well-nigh universal truth that men who wouldrefuse outright to meet certain classes of their own sex show noreluctance whatever over meeting the women of a correspondingcircle--that is, if the women are attractive. It is a depressing factand inclines one to sighs and head-shakes, and some moral indignation,until the reverse truth is brought to light--namely, that women haveidentically the same point of view; that, while they cast looks ofloathing and horror upon certain of their sisters, they will meet withpleasure any presentable man whatever his crimes or vices.

  Ste. Marie was very much puzzled over all this. It seemed to him sounnecessary that a man who really had some footing in the newer societyof Paris should choose to surround himself with people of this type; butas he looked on and wondered he became aware of a curious and, in thelight of a past conversation, significant fact: all of the people in theroom were young; all of them in their varying fashions and degrees veryattractive to look upon; all full to overflowing of life and spirits andthe determination to have a good time. He saw Captain Stewart movingamong them, playing very gracefully his role of host, and the man seemedto have dropped twenty years from his shoulders. A miracle ofrejuvenation seemed to have come upon him: his eyes were bright andeager, the color was high in his cheeks, and the dry, pedantic tone hadgone from his voice. Ste. Marie watched him, and at last he thought heunderstood. It was half revolting, half pathetic, he thought, but itcertainly was interesting to see.

  Duval, the great basso of the Opera, accompanied at the piano by one ofthe unclassified ladies, was just finishing Mephistopheles' drinkingsong out of _Faust_ when the door-bell rang.

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